


#3431

by EgoDominusTuus



Series: Blood and Scars [1]
Category: Fallout - Fandom, Fallout 4
Genre: Backstory, Mentions of Rape, Not All Beginnings are Pretty, Nuka World, Other, Revenge, Salem, raider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 02:56:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgoDominusTuus/pseuds/EgoDominusTuus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all stories have a pretty beginning - Salem's certainly doesn't. But revenge waits for no one.</p><p>---</p><p>In which we get the tale of how Salem got his scars, his holotags, and his life as a Raider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	#3431

A Brotherhood of Steel Squadron could have quite a few people in it - they usually had a few Knights, some Initiates, a Scribe, and a Paladin.

This squad had seven people in it, and there was a part of Salem that was disappointed in the fact that it was  _ only  _ seven people, because that meant that his fun wasn't going to last for very long at all.

It had taken him  _ six years _ to figure out who Knight Tara Astlin was - six long goddamn years of killing, and maiming, and torturing and bringing around a picture that had been crudely drawn from the word of a raider who had been kind enough to save him from certain death when he was nothing more than a newborn babe.

A lot of people say that raiders have no hearts - that they don't have the sanity to care... but the woman who had picked him up and raised him had cared. Maybe she'd done it because he had the most beautiful eyes that a baby had ever had; all oceanic and speaking of a time that no one in the Commonwealth had ever really seen. Whatever the reason, she'd picked him up from the fucked up streets of Salem, given him his name, and watched as the woman in Initiate garb and swinging blue holotags tucked tail and ran as though she was dropping off some dirty little secret that she could be rid of.

Salem was hardier than that - and Salem was less forgiving than the Commonwealth itself.

It was only a matter of time before he found her, really.

From what he'd learned, she was a point on marksman, really fantastic with a long range rifle - Salem used an ax if he was close, and a missile launcher that he was quite fond of when he took someone out from a distance.

She was a good person, Tara Astlin, with real morals and a dedication to her cause and to the Brotherhood - Salem was a raider, and he knew for a fact that the majority of raiders were  _ idiots _ . He'd take out his own people just as easily as he would a group of ghouls. He had no loyalty, because his mother sure as hell hadn't taught it to him.

Tara Astlin was a good woman, respected, cared for amongst her people - Salem was fuckable, and Salem was  _ feared. _

How he'd crawled out of that woman's womb, he'd never know. Who his father was didn't matter to him.

All that mattered was his  _ revenge.  _

The best thing about revenge is the moment when you know it's going to be mete out. Tara Astlin's squad had been sent to the ground, and no one knew the Commonwealth better than Salem. When they landed, he knew where they were, and when they set out... he knew where they were going.

When night fell, he knew exactly where to strike.

He was quick, and he was dangerous - he took them out on patrol, picked them off one by one. He would have taken them all, but that would have been one night and done... and some of them were in that fucking power armor that made blows from an ax annoying to gain proper penetration. He wasn't going to simply kill her with his missile launcher. He had too many questions - there were too many answers that were caught and held by her lying, betraying tongue.

He'd have them spoken, even if it was on her last breath.

Salem watched Tara Astlin mourn over her fallen comrades - she shed tears, and he was furious. The woman who'd raised him told him that she shed no tears when she left him wrapped in a Brotherhood of Steel uniform and naked on the streets of Salem. She told him that Tara Astlin hadn't looked back when he started to cry.

She was the one crying now, and there was a burning satisfaction in his gut for the fact that he was the one who had caused it - that he was the one who would continue to cause it for what she'd done.

Whether they thought he was some savage Deathclaw, stalking them in the night, or they knew that they were being hunted... they moved out. They scuttled like little bugs to the National Guard Training Yard, though Recon Squad Artemis made one fatal mistake.

They split up.

They left Tara Astlin alone, to try to get to a satellite station. They left her alone to secure the area, and Salem couldn't have been more pleased - the station that they were going to was full of mutants. They wouldn't make it through.

And no matter how much she tried to secure the facility, Tara Astlin was alone, and there was no wall thick enough and no lock strong enough to keep him from his answers... to keep him from his revenge.

He'd been in the area more than once. It was an easy place to locate ghouls, freshly turned bastards who always seemed to have good gear on them. 

It wasn't that far of a stretch for him to watch the building carefully - just as he suspected, more ghouls flocked to the facility... and just as he expected, there was gunfire from inside, and then the sound of a scream. Tara Astlin wasn't geared properly - she didn't have the weapons or ammo to fend off freshly turned ghouls that were far more interested in beating her to death than the few clips she had to empty into their chests.

With a smile and burning pleasure in his chest, he unsheathed his ax and kicked in the door that the ghouls had torn down the barricades for.

It wasn't hard to work his way through them - they were intent on the prize in the back room. His mind was a singular focus, and his aim was steady as he hacked through feral after feral, until he was standing at the doorway.

It was already opened - ghouls were flocking in, and Tara Astlin was standing in the back with her gun at her chest and a beacon flashing for help beside her. Salem made quick work again - his ax shifted and moved like liquid fluidity; poetry in motion, and a dance whose music only he could hear. It took five swings to take the ghouls down, and he rode the last one to the ground, so that his tattooed back was to the woman in the corner.

"Oh, God. Thank you. They flooded the area, I didn't think anyone was going to-"

She cut herself off as Salem rose and turned, and her face went stark white, as though she'd seen a ghost.

In her defense, she might as well have. Salem could only guess from looking at her that he had his father's appearance, because the only similarity he saw was in their eyes. Tara Astlin’s face was young… she didn’t look old enough to be a parent. His dark brow arched, and he sheathed the ax that he held.

"Hello, Mother."

She backpedaled, pressing her shoulders against the wall and shaking her head.

"You, no! I  _ killed _ you. You should be dead, you-" And then her brows knitted, realization shocking across her features. "You're his  _ son _ ."

"I'm  **_your_ ** son." Salem bit the words out, and something vicious started to curl inside of him. She'd said the words with disgust, with horror - she didn't look at him like some long lost precious gift that had finally found its way home to her arms - she didn’t look at him like the man who had just  _ saved _ her from a dozen ferals with no regard for his own safety . She looked at him like he was the reminder of some event that she'd rather forget.

She pulled her gun up, but he'd already heard the clip click empty.

"You should be..." She trailed off, as though she was too shocked, too full of horror to finish her sentence. Salem stepped forward, his bare hands painted with blood as they held upward, as though to say that he had no way to harm her.

"Dead. You left me for it, that's for sure. I want to know  _ why. _ " Oceanic eyes were fixated on her face - it was a face that he'd imagined as a child, a face that he'd sometimes longed for, though he would never admit it.

It was a face contorted in fear and disgust, and the reason that the words  _ Bad Luck _ were inked across his neck.

"You were  _ never _ supposed to happen." She bit the words out carefully, as though she'd choke on them if she wasn't cautious. "You were a mistake, and your  _ father _ was a monster. He-" Tara Astlin seemed incapable of finishing her sentence, and Salem might have had pity on the fact that it was clear she'd been raped, if she hadn't been looking at him as though he were the one who'd done it himself.

"So you left me for dead, because of the mistakes of a man that I've never met?" His words weren't accusatory, or furious. They were cold and calculated, and he took another step towards her.

" _ Yes _ ." She hissed it out, reaching into her boot for a knife. "You looked  _ just like him _ . Even when you were a baby... and I couldn't join the Brotherhood with you at my leg, I couldn't... I--" There was no resonance of guilt within her, only the sound of a woman who knew that she'd done something  _ wrong _ , and now the Piper was coming to collect his dues.

"You never cared, did you?"

She drew her chin up straight and knitted dark brows together - a strong woman, a proud woman. A woman who was prepared to fight. "You're his  _ son,  _ I can see it written all over you. I  _ couldn't  _ keep you."

Salem took the final step forward, so that they were within inches one another. It was only this close that the pain in his eyes was evident, and beneath that something far more frightening than fury - cold, unabated disgust, dispassion, and disinterest in carrying the conversation any further...

"That's all I needed to know. Thank you."

Their hands flashed out in unison, like some well choreographed dance - Tara Astlin's knife bit into his throat, ripping through the  _ Bad Luck _ tattoo and tearing a crimson grin beneath his chin. But it wasn't deep enough, and it wasn't fast enough to stop Salem's hands from wrapping around her throat, even though she slashed at his neck again.

He didn't waver when she tried to raise the knife a third time, he just squeezed down harder - her pulse was thick and panicked beneath his palm, and she struggled and tried to flail. Tara Astlin’s strength was leaving her as sure as the blood and oxygen was being cut from her brain. 

Salem’s face was blank and emotionless through it all, and his fingers tightened until a snapping sound spilled through the room.

She went limp, and Salem dropped to his knees with her. The wound on his neck was a ghastly thing, and he knew he'd have to crawl away to the nearest hack and slash to get stitches, or give them to himself if he couldn’t make it in time. Hands came up to hold in the blood...

But he didn't care - because the woman who had given birth to him... the woman who should have been  _ his mother _ was dead at his feet.

Bloodsoaked digits lashed out - the holotags that glowed blue around her neck were ripped away, and Salem dropped them around his own head, so that they swung and stuck against his gore soaked chest, crimson nearly obscuring what they said.

_ Identification code #3431. _

_ Tara Astlin. _

His mother - the bitch who was dead on the floor, and had tried to kill him.  _ Again _ .

She'd never even bothered to ask him his name.


End file.
